This is the beginning of a rag rug made from several pairs of sleep pants. It came out 21 inches wide and I think 4 feet long, and it is soft as butter. Now, it's on the Gear Floor at Lanterman's Mill in Mill Creek Park, Youngstown, Ohio, waiting for Saturday and the start of the Olde-Fashioned Christmas in the historic grist mill. If you're in the area, stop by! The crafters are there Saturday and Sunday, but I can't guarantee that this great rug will be there too long! All my rugs are one of a kind, and woven from recycled materials on my Union 36 carpet loom. 

“Spin Together is about the joy of spinning and the opportunity to share that joy with others who also like to spin.” Spin Together is a celebration of Spinning & Weaving Week, a team-based competition that ll takes place online. Over 500 team members participated, from 11 countries.

Noon on October 1, 2022 to Noon on October 8, 2022. Your local time. Spin where you want, as much as you can, whatever fiber you want. Then measure your yardage, report to your team captain. And in between support your teammates and form a community.
I had participated in 3 Spinzillas, so I knew the fiber I’d spin—Chevy, the ram at the Chardon Farm Park. I had plenty of it cleaned, dyed and ready to card. I took part in Tour de Fleece for the first time this year, and I liked the Facebook group format for forming community. Now, to choose a team as they formed up. I didn’t want to join anything ultra-competitive, and feel like I was letting the team down—I do work full-time, so I can’t spend 10 hours a day spinning. Some teams might be able to meet in person, or by Zoom. Again, might not fit my schedule. Anywhere in the world, remember? Choose by name? Wool Witches, Dances With Wool, Twisted Spinners. Clever, clever. I chose Team 52 Weeks of Sheep. They are based on a Facebook Group (public) and created a Facebook Group for the team (private.) Easy to make connections, and so much information about sheep!

Teams could have 25 members, tops. We had 11. Pretty sure we were all in the US, but I really only know where 3 of us were—and I’m one of the three. But we started connecting, sharing plans for what and how we’d spin. Spindles, wheels, e-spinners. And we started encouraging one another.
Because, you know, life happens. Illness, accidents, sick pets, equipment issues, work schedules. Best laid plans.

That week, I spun 1,410 yards of woolen yarn and made a skein of Art Yarn. I mainly used my bottom-whorl drop spindle, but at the very end I broke out my Scottish dealgan and tested how much I might be able to spin in the final 15 minutes before noon. (11 Yards, as it happens.) I didn’t waste time taking the last singles or plied yarn off the other spindles.

Five days to report yardage to your captain. Then the captains report the yardage. Then the teams wait for the results to be tabulated. Meanwhile, there are the two contests members can enter and vote on: Most Beautiful Skein and Wildest Art Yarn. I entered both.

And then more waiting. But at last the results came up. Most Beautiful Skein: there were five pages of beautiful yarns up for vote. No way I was getting that. But maybe Art Yarn, I had a chance. I mean I had handspun, scraps of dupioni silk, locks of wool, yarn that’s partly Chevy and partly a sheep he sired. Wild. Named it “Dragonspun.” Nope.
Well how did Team 52 Weeks do? I started to scroll down the results. Before the Team stats came results by method. Some spinners use spindles and wheels. Some use just one method.

First came “Highest Yardage on a Spindle.”
1st place: 2,945 yards. Well over a mile (1760)
 2nd: 2,379 yards. Well over a mile. My best ever was a mile and a quarter.
3rd: 1,752 yards. Now we’re in my range. If only I’d filled my spindle a couple more times…
4th: 1,530 yards. If only I’d spun another hour…

And then: I realized there was a 5th place. And it was me! 1,410 yards for the honor of Team 52 Weeks of Sheep and a couple of cool fiber prizes. I wasn’t the high yardage spinner for my team, but I was the only one spinning exclusively on my drop spindles.

In that first week of October, spinners spun 1,794,813 yards. The top wheel spinner did 49,077 yards. The top e-spinner made 61,515 yards. Our team yardage was 10,732 yards. Over 30 teams, and we weren’t last! (Always my cherished position when running Fun Runs with various dogs.)
​
And we had a lot of fun. We shared, we supported, we learned how much we could create, as we spun together!

​“Retirement home available for deserving gelding. Know a special guy at the end of his show career? You don’t really have the stall space, but you don’t want him to go just anywhere?”
I put that out on my vendor table at the Summer Classic Arabian Horse Show, Harlansburg Show Grounds, in 2004.Put it out to the universe that, after losing Max the year before, I was ready to look for another Arabian. (Was that the year we had a loose horse right outside the vendor tent, and I wondered whether she’d fit in my Civic Coupe? I always kept a halter and lead rope in my car, but in fact, all we vendors did was make sure she didn’t head toward the road while her owner came up with a can of grain and her halter.)
Just before Christmas, 2004, a woman called to say a horse had just come in to Henderson Equestrian in Butler, and they thought his situation was precarious due to his owner’s health. Was I interested in meeting him? A bay with a star.
Day after Christmas, the freezing cold arena at Henderson, and they walked him toward me. That big white star on his forehead shone like a beacon. His name was Cash. A 17-year old Polish Arabian. When he shed out, he had tiger-stripes on his front legs, a nickle-sized black body spot on his left side, and ermine spots on both hind heels. Three white socks, varying heights.
He was my gigolo—good looking, did nothing that might be called work, I paid all his bills. His manners were impeccable—no biting, never saw him kick, no stepping on me. An aristocrat of mixed Polish and Egyptian bloodlines, foaled at the end of the Arabian boom, and named Cashoggi after Adnan Kashoggi, the richest man in the world—who was later revealed to be an international arms dealer. Never shown, never shod, gelded at 8, possibly got his first under-saddle training at 16 or 17. He had heaves, from moldy hay, or a damp barn, and he could never have hay again.
Turned out, that wasn’t true. His heave trigger was not hay, but a mold that only blossomed in the fall. He dodged it for years, only having one flare-up that I can recall. He had “tick fever” twice, and colicked once, and got kicked in the ribs. His face went gray. When he was 32, he started showing symptoms of Cushing’s Syndrome, and he was on daily meds for the rest of his days.
He wasn’t well started for riding. He was started late, and may not have had much time to learn to carry a rider. I was told he had learned to buck. He was anxious about having a person on his back. But on the ground, he trusted me. He was on the long line when a sapling started to fall beside the ring. I halted him, talked to him, dared not go near him because I knew he would bolt when the tree fell. He did, I dropped the line and let him go. He didn’t run away from me. He stayed on the circle around me. Scared, cantering, but listening to me. He came down to a trot, so I gave him an “Aaaaand walk.”—and he did! So I gave him a “Ho!”, and he stopped. I picked up the line, and walked toward him, folding up the line as I went. And told him what a good boy he was!
I didn’t care about riding him. I had less time, he was afraid of being ridden. I didn’t have to be on his back to enjoy being with him.
We used the ground poles to learn his prepositions: He could do “over”. Any horse can do that. And of course he could do “around.” But as an Arab, he could do “between” like nobody’s business We’d walk between two poles, turn tight around the end and walk between the next set. He was nimble—but I always had to tell him to pick his feet up when we came back into the stall! Every time.
His stall window looked into the chicken coop. And at the end, when he was in the small pasture where the other horses could not chase him, he hung out by the neighbor’s outdoor chicken coop. I went down to see him, and heard the hens singing quietly. Cash liked chickens. I’m so glad he had that!
He was 34 years, one day shy of 6 months when I got the call every horse owner dreads: 5:15 in the morning, from the barn. Something was wrong, I might want to come out. The vet confirmed what I already knew.
He went surrounded by those he had known for years, his vet, the farm owner, me. I stood where he could see me, and he pointed his ears at me, which horse people know means he was looking at me. All I could see was that big white star, shining in the early morning light.
Rest in Peace, Cash.
 

Click here I’ve been visiting quilt shops with my sister—and my mom—for years, and collecting fabric of all sorts. Some for stenciling on, some for rag rugs, some just because it took my fancy, with a vague plan to someday make a Calandran quilt.Well, Druyan weaves, and Elisena spins, and she wove Tristan a self-repairing cloak—but I don’t have a sense of them as quilters. I can appreciate a quilt both for design and craftsmanship—I have been to a lot of quilt shows, and my sister is a fine quilter. But the plan for a Calandran quilt would not come together.
Came this year’s Canfield Fair Fine Arts newest specialty category: Textile Tapestry: “An art quilt is a stitched and layered textile incorporating any material and employing any technique. Explore the many options of felting, weaving, embroidery, quilting or needlework using non-traditional, creative techniques.”
Tapestries. Of a manageable size, and more useful than a bed-sized quilt. I decided to quilt portraits of Tristan and Elisena. I used the fabric I’d collected—and I created some. I had heat-set fabric crayons. I sketched pieces for the portraits, Tristan and Elisena of course—but also Thomas. I had a stash of quilting fabric and samples of drapery fabric—sheer silk/metallic cloth that I could layer over other pieces. I used hand-dyed fleece to needlefelt a full moon. One of my hand-cut stencils is a unicorn. There are two unicorns stenciled on the tapestry—the first, gold one is hidden, because I decided it should be white pearl, and on a square of green silk. There’s dupioni silk too, and silver tissue, and dried laced-out leaves and some fresh-cut lavender.
Tristan has the moon and the unicorn—That’s for Moonshine, his early adventure when he and Thomas first met. Thomas is there, and Minstrel. And chickens, carefully cut from farm-theme fabric. There’s Valadan, the Warhorse of Esdragon. Tristan’s pouch of magic stones and feathers, with a real quartz crystal. There’s a beach, for his beach-combing habit. There’s mended denim there, and shortbread. There’s cloud batik fabric, because Tristan’s a weather-witch. The Sword of Calandra is there, in silver lame and dupioni silk.
Elisena is surrounded by botanicals, because that is her power. Her drop spindle with the flying birds is there, because it’s terribly important to her, even though she isn’t seen spinning in any of the books. There lavender stitched in, as well as lavender-print fabric, because lavender is her signature scent. And the Ten Rings of Allaire are there, every one of them, painted on silk and embellished with dyed wool. Yarn, hand-spun on my dealgan, a Scottish drop spindle, roams over all and binds it together.
Tristan’s portrait is covered with drapery silk tissue, and when I pulled it from the sample header, it tore. I chose to regard that rip as a happy accident, and placed it over Tristan’s left cheekbone, where Polassar punched him when they went into Radak. Where he met Elisena. Tristan’s face is veiled with the silk tissue—because he’s been hidden his whole life.
No one casually wandering through Fine Arts knew any of this. You have to have read the books. These are character tapestries.
They pleased the judges, though. Tristan got the blue ribbon, and Elisena the red. Now the Fair’s done, the tapestries are home, and I have to decide where to hang them!to edit.

The Tour de Fleece runs from July 1st to July 24th in whatever time zone you are in.
It’s a group of spinners who—originally—spun on their spinning wheels while the cyclists were riding in the Tour de France. If it was a mountain day for the riders, the spinners would set themselves challenges—learn a new method, try a new fleece or a new wheel.
If the riders rested, the spinners also rested. I’m sure there were elements
of competition and endurance, but competition was really more a Spinzilla thing:
how much yarn can I—or my team—spin in a week?
Now, the Tour de Fleece Facebook Group spinners set all sorts of goal for ourselves.
I feel the important one is to support each other. (We have at least one from Ukraine—she’s spinning dog fur to make belts for the soldiers!) This is my first Tour, and I’ll be living my normal life: working full time, taking care of my English Shepherd,
my cat and my 34-year old Polish Arabian horse. I’ll read. I’ll sleep.
I will most likely be serving Jury Duty. I will celebrate my birthday, go to church, and prepare art to sell at Confluence, the Pittsburgh Science Fiction Convention.
I drop-spindle, so I can spin where I like.
I am hardly focused on how much yardage I can spin.
My plan is to give a Tour of a Fleece and how I use it.


I taught myself to drop-spindle in the mid 1970s—I made myself a spindle from a wooden crochet hook and a stacking toy’s wooden ring, and I begged some fleece from a woman in a pottery class I was taking. Hildy, her name was.
(The sheep. How like me, that I only remember the sheep’s name!) It was super hard to find fleeces in those days—wool disappeared into “the Pool”. No Amazon. No Etsy. When I did find fleeces, I didn’t understand cleaning and storing, and the moths got them. I went to a wool sale in Mercer County, and bought a bottom-whorl drop spindle, wool cards, and half a Corriedale fleece from a ewe that had “just had twins”. I still didn’t know how to scour a fleece, but I played with dyes a bit—onion skins, and Rit, and Kool-Aid and the simmering and the vinegar took care of moths. I spun a very, very little, mostly demonstrating at craft events. Then I found my tribe—the Canfield Spinner’s Guild—and through them, the FarmPark.
The Lake MetroParks FarmPark is in Chardon, Ohio, and that’s where I bought my first raw fleece from a named sheep: “Jake, Jacob wether”. (Jacobs are spotted sheep, white, black, brown, and wethers are neutered males.) Dollar a pound. I was hooked. I bet I bought six fleeces that first year! Much as I enjoyed trying every kind of fleece I could get my hands on—Shetland, Gotland, Angora Goat, Scottish Blackface, Cheviot, Blueface Leicester, I loved Jake’s fleece, and wanted to get it again. Some years I managed it, some years I didn’t. I sought Jake out at the FarmPark, and found him doing his job as the “minder” for Pete, their Jacob ram, he of the three massive horns. I got Pete’s fleece a couple of times. And for what was to be Jake’s final fleece before his retirement to another farm after Pete had passed away—well, Jake wasn’t even shorn by the Shearing Weekend in 2016. I made arrangements to buy the fleece when it was off of Jake’s back, and checked out the other fleeces offered for sale. I fell in love with a giant bag of fluff labeled “Finn”. It was lovely, and cost more than I had ever paid for a fleece. (Might have cost as much as all my first-year purchases put together.) Turned out, it wasn’t from a Finnsheep at all, but from Chevy, their new ram, presumed to be a Cheviot cross if not pure Cheviot. The fleece weighed 13 pounds—which for someone used to 6 pound Jacob fleeces was huge. And I know I heard someone say “we should have expected it, his hogget fleece was 11 pounds.” (A hogget is a year-old sheep, so basically a first fleece.)
When Jake was shorn, I went back to Chardon to pick up his fleece, and I was offered part of a nice fleece that they wanted a hand-spinner to try. They let me pick 5 pounds out of an 11 pound fleece, and it was indeed lovely stuff. I am convinced it is Chevy’s 2015 hogget fleece. (Because remember, I had just started working with Chevy’s fleece from 2016.)
This bit of the hogget fleece, I dyed with a cold-water dye. I normally use “acid” dyes, the acid being vinegar. I remember I didn’t have whatever I was supposed to add to the cold-water dye, so I didn’t get an intense color. Maybe just as well. This bit is interesting, and spins into a great yarn. It also makes a nuanced fleece to needlefelt with—crimpy locks, color shading up and down them. I am needlefelting a background fabric for an entry for the Canfield Fair Art Show, a new Fine Arts category called “Textile Tapestry”. The pieces are all going to be based on my books.
I have obtained Chevy’s fleece several times since 2016—every time it was possible to do so. And I’ve met him, seen him both shorn and not-yet shorn. Turns out he’s a real friendly sheep, and when his duties with the ewes are done, he hangs out by the Visitor’s Center with his “minder” Micro, happy to be a wooly ambassador. An ambassador who eats corn off the cob faster than you can believe!

   What if he doesn’t come back?

   Kess tossed her head. As if Leith would even find Esdragon without Valadan’s help. The Warhorse would certainly carry him back to her. She turned the moonstone ring on her finger, caressing the warm silver.

   If he wanted to come back. No, he’d refused to leave her, no matter how she’d striven to shed him. And she was his luck—if he tried to venture anything other than a great circle back to her, his curse would return full-force. At least so Leith believed. She had never set much store by his curse, herself, but it was what he believed that mattered. That was how curses worked.

   She did not do well in idleness. Kess glared at the sea-stained chest of precious fabrics, lighter by a great length of velvet that shifted between palest pink, blue, lavender and silver, the cloth she had selected for her gown. She was of Esdragon, she knew shipwrecks. Ill-luck had less to do with them than the power of the sea and foolish captains who dared its waves incautiously. But to be reunited with the very chest a prince had been carrying to his promised bride…that made one believe in luck. It did not do much to divert her. She turned the ring again. The moonstone shone as it caught the light.

   Who had she been, that king’s daughter they were packing their prince off to wed? Had she been a beauty?

   Well, he didn’t get to her, did he? His ill-luck stopped him. In fact, prevented his ever meeting her. And Leith was not such a fool as to regret that. She’d see to it he never did. If she ever saw him again.

   She had no pastimes, that was the trouble. She’d rather go riding than pick up a needle and attempt embroidery. And she couldn’t ride out—Leith had the horse, while she was mewed in the inn. She could read, but books were for the rich, or they were ledgers for men of business. The inn offered neither. There might be singing, card-playing, in the taproom below—and plenty of trouble to find there, but she had no heart for it.

   There was a discreet tap at her door.

   “Go away! I’m not hungry!” He could never be back so soon, and she was ashamed of how her heart had leapt—and fallen. Where was her pride? Why was she hiding in the shuttered dimness? She was free to take her meals in the common room, or walk the city if she chose. Alone. She found no delight in the prospect. She missed Leith. How had that happened? And then she felt a flush rise to her face.

   “Lady Kessallia?”

   “Go away!” She wouldn’t be able to eat a bite, no matter how tasty the inn’s food was. Nor sleep—she felt tight as a bowstring, ready to snap. And she feared it would be worse when they reached Esdragon…

   “My lady, they told me the gown had been sent. May I come in?”

   Kess said nothing. She did not require to have her gown fitted. She’d tried it already. She had insisted on a style she could manage to don without a maid’s help, no laces up the back. And one she could ride in. She was Duchess of Esdragon, not some cloistered princess.

   She had asked Leith to bring her one of her father’s horses—another reason he could not be back so soon. None of the coursers was swift as Valadan, and the palfreys were bred for smooth gaits, not speed. If he insisted on a palfrey…which he might. He’d probably choose by color, so white, or cream. None of the coursers had coats of either color, that she recalled. Maybe he’d let Valadan choose. There was hope of that. He wouldn’t choose a tame lady’s mount for her.

   “My lady, I’m not the maid. I haven’t brought your dinner. I am a portrait painter.” A pause. “I’ve been hired to paint you. In the gown. If it’s here?” Another pause. “The cloth merchant said it had been delivered.”

   Someone saw the gown being delivered, and a ruse was launched! Now there was a diversion! Kess lifted the latch and jerked the door open. “Go away!”

   A woman stood outside, feet planted, a basket over her arm. No tray of food.  A seamstress, for sure.

   But the short, silver-haired woman was also carrying a frame of hinged wood—an easel—as well as the basket—and that basket had a sheaf of paintbrushes poking out of it. “Paint my portrait?” Kess asked, frowning.

   “The gentleman asked that I come as soon as the gown was delivered.” The woman juggled the easel through the doorway, forcing Kess to step back, or be bumped by the basket. “The tailor told me the gown had been sent this morning, so here I am.”

   I’ve never had my portrait done. But this painter did not need to know that her father had not busied himself arranging a marriage for his only child and heir. “But…he knows what I look like.” Portraits were for marriages arranged between parties who had not met. Who might never actually meet.  Princes and princesses, political alliances. Why would Leith want her portrait done? “Did the…gentleman…say I was to be painted in the gown?” Kess could not decide whether this was better or worse than a ruse. Had she opened her door to men bent on abducting her, demanding a ransom—she knew she could deal with that. But this…

   “Actually, my lady, he said to wait till the gown was delivered, but that you were to choose what to wear. And that ‘twas why he chose me—the only woman painter in all the city.” She beamed at Kess. “He said there would be time only to paint what we name a pocket portrait.”

   So it was no ruse. Kess felt an odd flutter in her stomach. Leith had found a way to divert her without wounding her pride. He hadn’t sent a minstrel to torment her with songs. He hadn’t sent her books of love-poetry to fling across the room. He wasn’t devious enough to send false abductors…or mad enough.

   The painter fetched out an object that looked like a small book, two thin leaves of pale wood hinged at one side and latched at the other. Kess observed that with interest. Very small. Little of whatever she wore would show, post rider garb or gown. And latched.

   Latched. So, a very private portrait. For Leith’s eyes only. And he gave her the choice of how private it needed to be…

   Kess shook her hair free of its braid, let it cascade over her shoulders. She was his luck—and his Lady come to earth. There was a style to that, and her moon-pale hair was part of it. Under the night sky…the full moon above them…

   “Is there light enough? Where shall I sit?”

   The painter drew a tall stool over, sat Kess on it. The shutters were adjusted, a lamp was moved, the easel was positioned, pots of paint were set out. All was ready. “What about the gown?”

   Why did he want a portrait anyway? Leith would see her every day, in one gown or another. What did he want to remember?

   “Can you paint the moon in the sky behind me? A full moon?”

   “As my lady chooses.” A stick of charcoal was moving busily over the panel.

   “It doesn’t matter if it’s really daylight?”

   “It doesn’t matter a bit. I watch the moon every night.” Now she was lifting a brush, as she squinted at Kess. The painter laid down the brush, crossed to Kess, posed her with gentle fingers, turning her head just so, lifting her chin. Repeated a moment later, as Kess fidgeted. The gown was draped over the trunk, shimmering in plain view.

   “Should I fetch the gown?” the painter asked.

   Kess considered.

   A very private portrait. Not to intrigue a stranger, nor to secure a betrothal. Not to offer a daughter like a prize cow at the fair. A portrait for Leith’s eyes only. Kess thought of their nights beneath the moon, the sky their only roof. His eyes, the green and the brown, looking into hers…and she knew what Leith wanted to remember.

   She combed her fingers through her hair again. The moonstone ring caught on the ribbon that fastened her blue linen sark, and the loose knot came undone. She slipped the garment off, let it slide down over her shoulders. “We won’t bother with the gown,” Kess said. “Just the moon.”
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Copyright Susan Dexter 2022

Sunflowers for Ukraine!
This is my 100% wool needlefelt of Lanterman's Mill in Mill Creek Park, Youngstown, Ohio, under a full moon. I added the sunflowers last weekend, and it is being sent to the benefit for Ukraine sale at the Davis Family YMCA, 45 McClurg Road, Boardman, Ohio. Pieces start hanging April 10th. 100% of the proceeds will go to YMCA Ukraine, which has a presence in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Poltava, Odessa and 20+ other Ukrainian cities. 

Honeymoon Before the Wedding:
the Love Story of Leith and Kess Continues…
 
   Most of the nights they had slept under the open sky and his Lady’s light, but She moved through Her Dance inexorably, and Her Face was dark when the two in post-rider garb rode a black horse into the ferry-port which sat above the Wizards’ City of Kovelir. And a bit of hack-silver secured a modest inn-roof over their heads.
   “We could have caught the last ferry,” Kess insisted, tossing her moon-pale hair free of its braid.
   Leith expertly dodged the flying hair, and closed the door. “You slipped out of Esdragon as a post-rider,” he pointed out. “You’re going back as its duchess.”
   “You’ll still share my bed. Now that there’s actually a bed.” She slid her blue sark a provocative inch down over her left shoulder.
   “I’m a prince of the Isles,” Leith said, with what he hoped was dignity. “I’m waiting for the wedding.” He regarded Kess, with both green eye and brown. “Officially.”
                                                                        #
   “You don’t just ride in,” Leith said. Careful not to make it an order.
   “I don’t?” Questioning whether he would dare tell the Duchess Kessallia what she ought to do. Prince of the Isles or not.
   “You should be escorted home,” Leith advised. “After it’s been announced that you’re returning. It will look better than riding in two on a horse.”
   “If the horse is Valadan, we could be at Keverne by mid-morning.” Kess nestled in, put her head on his shoulder. Leith could see dawn creeping in around the window-shutter.
   “You’ve been away for months. They’ve had no news of you.” He reflected how his luck had changed. Once, dawn would have been leaking through the roof. “Who knows what they’ve got up to at Keverne? But if a post-rider carries a letter sealed with the ducal signet, they’ll be forced to send an escort.” Leith rubbed his thumb over the ring on Kess’ hand, then turned that hand over and kissed her palm. “Meanwhile, Valadan has brought me back here, so the duchess and her betrothed can be escorted to Keverne together.”
   Kess frowned.
   Leith watched her out of his green left eye. So close, she was blurry, but she was not angry. “You just won’t give them a chance to lodge an objection,” he mused.
                                                                   #
   The Street of the Weavers circled on from the Street of the Dyers, which was in the outer ring of the city due to its pungent aromas, still an improvement over the street of the Tanneries.  “What are we doing here?” Kess asked plaintively. “I don’t need a tapestry. Keverne is full of them.”
   “When you received me in the throne hall at Keverne, I thought you were my Lady come to earth. That’s the Duchess who’s going back to Esdragon. Not a post-rider. So let’s get you a gown.”
   “A gown? We don’t have coin for that. Didn’t matter in the Berianas, but merchants here will certainly require it.”
   “Well…”
   “What are you hiding?” Kess asked sharply.
   “Hiding? I’m a priest. I’ve never hidden that.” Leith shrugged. “I was raised in the temple of the Moon Goddess. Even though I don’t serve my Lady there, I still serve.”
   “Does she have a temple here?”
   “I suppose so…” Leith was baffled. Should they have sought lodging there? It hadn’t occurred to him…
   “Did you go begging?”
   “No!” Leith was horrified. “We aren’t a rich order! I serve my Lady. When I perform services for others, I am entitled to be paid.”
   “Others?” What others were there?
   “Your father”, Leith said patiently. “When we buried your cousin Challoner, it was proper that rites be said. I said them. And you father paid me.”
   “Paid you?” No coins in the Berianas, her tone said.
   Leith sighed. He reached into his belt pouch. Once, he would have found that it had acquired a hole, and held nothing. But Kess was his luck. He held out his hand. A nugget of yellow metal the size of his thumbnail sat on his palm.
   “What use does Symond have for these, except to make jewels for your mother? Shall we go in?” He stowed the nugget away, and handed her through the shop door gracefully, as a prince of the Isles ought. “What takes your fancy, my Lady?”
   At Keverne, the Ducal Wardrobe held bolts of woven wool in sober, practical colors—and tucked away, lengths of silk that had come to Esdragon with her mother. Silk, Kess thought, and in the pale colors that made her resemble the Lady of the Moon. Could she render Leith speechless? That would be delicious.
   “You’ll need something too,” she told him. “You can’t accompany me back in post-rider garb. My counselors aren’t fools.”
   “I suppose not.” The masquerade had to stop. A pity—he found post-rider garb comfortable, whereas court dress rarely was. Leith’s attention was caught by bolts of cloth spilling from a shelf. Cloth of a sort he had seen beforetime…cross-woven stripes and checks. He knew the weave, he surely did. His Order’s cross-weave was black sheep’s wool and white sheep’s wool, from the Lady’s own flocks of sheep. These were brighter colors, dyed in the threads, most like. The very fine threads, no humble priest’s garb this. And by the wool, etched velvets such as he had seen worn at his father’s court.
   “This cloth was woven in the Isles,” Leith said, turning to the hovering merchant. “How did you come by it?”
   The merchant wrung his hands. “Salvage, Noble Sir.”
   Ah, he had not known whence the cloth came. Else it would have been more prominently displayed.
    “Cast up on the shore, and brought to me as a known judge of quality goods. Come from a shipwreck they said, but the chest was sound, the cloth no worse than damp.”
   “You have the chest?”
   The merchant nodded, gestured.
   “What is it?” Kess asked, leaving the pale silks to see what distracted him. “Oh! How do you make velvet do that?”
   Leith let the two-color cloth flow through his fingers. “Trade secret. And I was never allowed near the looms nor the weavers—my curse, trouble probably wouldn’t have stopped at snapped threads. But when they packed me off to wed that foreign princess, they sent a trunk of this stuff with me.” Leith bent, squinted, recognized. “This trunk, in fact.” He turned to the merchant. “I’ll have the lot—cloth, trunk—and the cloth the lady chooses.”
                                                                              #
   Kess gave direction for her gown, style and measurements. The merchant bowed his understanding, rubbing his hands now with the delight the promise of profit gave.
   “You’ll need something as well.” More direction, mainly from Kess, with Leith advising on fashions at the court of the King of the Isles and carefully amending for comfort whenever he could manage it. Cloth was draped, measuring was done, delivery was arranged for.
   The trunk was ordered sent to the inn. Leith and Kess strolled the streets of the ferry-port, nibbling segments of sweet oranges, in no hurry to return to the inn, or depart for the ferry. The clothing would be ready in three days’ time. Given Valadan’s speed, Leith would not need to depart for two days. Time enough, he found, to hire a craftsman to turn a moonstone and a nugget of silver into a betrothal ring. Time enough, indeed, to let Valadan carry the two of them back into the countryside so that Leith might present that ring to his Lady on Earth under a roof of cerulean sky as they had grown used to, journeying from the Berianas. His Lady Above was but an eyelash crescent, but neither Leith nor Kess needed light to observe the other, when the touch of hands and lips would do as well.
                                                                                                    Copyright Susan Dexter. 2022

Something to do during the big winter storm--because it reminds me of why I started writing, with The Ring of Allaire: short story to novel to my first published book.
 
 
Wizard’s Destiny
Book One: The Ring of Allaire Del Rey mass market paperback October 1981
Createspace trade paperback July 2012
Book Two: The Sword of Calandra Del Rey mass market paperback 1985
Createspace trade paperback September 2012
Book Three: The Mountains of Channadran Del Rey mass market paperback 1986
Createspace trade paperback October 2012
 
The Warhorse of Esdragon
Book One: The Prince of Ill-Luck: Del Rey mass market paperback March 1994
Createspace trade paperback July 2017
Book Two: The Wind Witch: Del Rey mass market paperback November 1994
Createspace trade paperback June 2018
Book Three: The True Knight: Del Rey mass market paperback January 1996
Createspace trade paperback September 2020
Book Four: The Wandering Duke
Createspace trade paperback May 2013
Special Edition: The Wandering Duke Book Four of The Warhorse of Esdragon
Createspace trade paperback May 2021
 
Thistledown: novella, Once Upon a Time, an Anthology of Modern Fairy Tales,
 ed. Lester del Rey & Rissa Kessler, Del Rey Books 1991
Thistledown: Novel, YA
 Createspace trade paperback July 2014
Moonshine: YA, Wildside Press, 2001 (aka Moonlight)
The Wizard’s Shadow Del Rey mass market paperback August 1993
Createspace trade paperback July 2016
 
Arthurian
Mythos (collected short stories “Where Bestowed”, “Rowan, Oak and Iron”, “Tasks”)
 e-book February 2012


Short Fiction
 “Herding Instinct” Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction October/November 1994
 “Where Bestowed” Excalibur anthology, Warner Books, May, 1995
ed. Richard Gilliam, Martin H. Greenberg, Edward F. Kramer
“Tasks” Marion Zimmer Bradley’s FANTASY, issue #43 Spring 1999
“Rowan, Oak and Iron” (“Crawls”) Marion Zimmer Bradley’s FANTAS,Y issue #49, Autumn, 2000
 “Butternut Ale” Marion Zimmer Bradley’s FANTASY, issue # 46 Winter 2000



Nonfiction
The Writer Magazine November 1997
“Tricks of the Wizard’s Trade”
Horse Illustrated December 1992
 “The Woman from Snowy River, Adventures with an Australian Stock Saddle”